Dawson CC Athletics

Larry Peabody was born in Hardin, Montana and raised in Bozeman. In 1981, Peabody won the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association (NIRA) Bareback Championship while helping the Dawson Community College Men’s Rodeo team win the National Championship. That is still the only National Championship team Dawson Community College has ever produced. In that magical year, the men’s team first won a Big Sky Region Championship and then the NIRA Championship. Later that year, Peabody qualified for his first National Finals Rodeo. At that NFR, Peabody set a high score record of 89. This NFR record score stood for fourteen years before it was broken. That was also the first of five consecutive years he went to the National Finals Rodeo. He won the National Finals Average Championship in 1983 and went on to capture the world title in bareback riding in 1984. 

He won the Montana Circuit Bareback Championship four times (1980-82 and 1984). Peabody was the Montana All-Around Champion in 1982. He was also the RAM Circuit Year-End Champion in 1983.  

Peabody was a champion at many rodeos including Buffalo Bill Rodeo, Cheyenne Frontier Days, Cody Stampede, Deadwood Days of ’76 Rodeo, Ellensburg Rodeo, Greeley Stampede, Red Bluff Round-Up, Redding Rodeo, San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo World’s Oldest Rodeo Prescott Frontier Days. 

This rodeo legend was inducted with his 1981 team into the DCC Athletics Hall of Fame in 2019 and the National Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame later that year. He was also inducted into the Montana Pro Rodeo Hall and Wall of Fame.

After all of his rodeo success, Peabody gradually retired from rodeo to run a cattle ranch in Montana where he lives with his wife Mary.